[mythtv-users] /dev/video1 Not Always Available

[Mache Creeger]

Since I upgraded from 0.19 to 0.20, I have found that random reboots 
of my Fedora Core 5 version 2.6.17-1.2187 server with a dual tuner 
WinTV PVR 500 card, Abit NF7-S2G motherboard, and Nvidia FX6200 
graphics card, sometimes results in a missing "/dev/video1" and just 
a "/dev/video0".  This does not happen all the time, just sometimes, 
with no discernable reason.  When it does, the second tuner becomes 
unavailable for use.

When "/dev/video1" is missing, running "dmesg | grep ivtv" indeed 
shows that when the first tuner was attempted to be initialized there 
were problems loading the driver.  There never seems to be a problem 
loading the very same drivers that failed for the first tuner for the 
second tuner.

I checked the Internet and noted that some folks have suggested that 
"/proc/sys/kernel/hotplug" may be the problem.  On checking the 
contents of the file, I have found it to be empty.  The discussion 
groups suggested that I add "/sbin/hotplug" to the file before 
rebooting.  While this action has helped in the frequency of the 
server coming up with the proper configuration, I still cannot get 
reliable, repeatable boots that always result in both "/dev/video0" 
and "/dev/video1" being available.  Since power outages do cause 
random reboots, I want to make sure that the machine will always 
reboot to the proper state.

Does anyone have an idea on how to fix this problem?

-- Mache

# rpm -qa | grep ivtv
ivtv-kmdl-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5-0.7.1-118.fc5.at
perl-Video-ivtv-0.13-8.fc5.at
ivtv-0.7.1-118.fc5.at
ivtv-firmware-1.8a-10.at

# rpm -qa | grep nvidia
kmod-nvidia-1.0.8774-1.2.6.17_1.2187_FC5
nvidia-graphics8774-kmdl-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5-1.0_8774-75.fc5.at
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-1.0.8774-1.lvn5
nvidia-graphics-devices-1.0-5.fc5.at